...outline of how the James Bulger Case is presented in texts 1, 2 and 3. The first text, ”Every parents nightmare”, is a news article written by Mark McKay for BBC in October 2000. The article, in a chronologically and neutrally fashion, objectively describes the James Bulger Case from beginning to end. The text is dense in terms of factual information, as one would expect from a news article. The second text, “Life after James”, is an article written by Blake Morrison for The Guardian Online in Februrary 2003. The article approaches the presentation of the James Bulger Case in a different way. By peaking behind thick curtains of opinions held by the public, the text man-ages to provoke thoughts and stimulate ideas. Blake Morris succesfully shifts the paradigm of the James Bulger Case by taking a step backwards, which leads the audience to the introduc-tion of the bigger picture, where he explains and examines his view; the James Bulger Case is a problem, but it is not the problem. The issue lies in the society itself. The third and last text, “James Bulger killing; 20 years on”, is an article written by Amelia Hill for The Guardian Online in Februrary 2013. Arguably, the article is an addendum to the previ-ous text, “Life after James”. Amelia Hill takes the reader back twenty years, where she daringly questions the method of which the public, the media and the politicians used to deal with the case. Analyse how Blake Morrison presents the James Bulger case in text 2. Here...
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...How do the Theories of Emotion, Motivation and Development explain the events and public response to the James Bulger case of 1993? Theories allow people to see the world in a clear manner and allow them to perform actions based on what is rational. There are many theories that have evolved over the past century in Western cultures that attempt to explain how personalities develop, why people behave in certain ways, the type of environmental conditions that motivate them into acting in specific ways, and how these factors are interrelated. Some of the theories base their explanations on the social and emotional circumstances in the early years of an individual. This Essay aims to analyse the theories of emotion, motivation, and development and apply them to the events and public response to the James Bulger case of 1993. “ ‘I can never forgive Thompson and Venables for the horrendous, calculated, cold blooded murder of James.’ Said Denise Fergus the mother of the boy.” (Day. 2008). In an act that shocked the world, two ten year old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson kidnapped and murdered James Bulger aged just two. The murder of James Patrick Bulger took place in Kirkby, Merseyside, England, on the 12 of February 1993. Bulger was a victim of abduction, torture and murder by two 10-year-old boys, named Robert Thompson (born 23rd August 1982) and the other one named Jon Venables (born 13th August 1982). It started with Bulger's disappearance on the 12 of February 1993...
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...Whitey the Mobster James Bulger was born on September 3, 1929, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. One of six children born to Catholic Irish parents, “Whitey” (so-named for his white-blond hair) grew up in a South Boston housing project. His father worked as a longshoreman. Bulger was a troublemaker and even lived out the childhood fantasy of running away with the circus when he was ten years old. “Whitey” Bulger was first arrested at age 14 for stealing, and his criminal record escalated from there. As a youth, he was arrested for larceny, forgery, assault and battery, and armed robbery and served five years in a juvenile reformatory. James had two brothers, Senator William "Billy" Bulger was a Korean War veteran and formerly an influential leader of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. Senator Bulger rose to become President of the Massachusetts State Senate.his second brother Judge John "Jackie" Bulger, a retired Massachusetts court clerk magistrate who later was convicted of perjury. “Whitey” Bulger fathered one child that died at the age of 6 from Reye's syndrome after having a severe allergic reaction to an aspirin injection. Upon “Whitey’s” release from the reformatory, he joined the Air Force where he served time in military jail for assault before being arrested for going AWOL. James received an honorable discharge in 1952. James had a life of crime, being gang leader and being a fugitive. James Bulger returning to Boston after being discharged from the Air Force, embarked...
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...belief of some psychiatrists that showing violent films to the disturbed individuals may help them to express their anger harmlessly. Also, they argue that television can have a pro-influence on children. They stated that ‘these portrayals of kindness, generosity, being helpful and socially responsible have been known to exert both short-term and long-term influences on similar behaviors among children. This provides us with a positive effect and shows that media violence does not produce violent behaviour. As the hypodermic syringe model suggests, children copy what they see and behave more aggressively in the real world. The James Bulger case supports this. Two ten year old boys killed a 3 year old toddler (James) after watching the movie ‘Child's play 3’. Evidence suggests that the boys copied the content within the film and performed similar acts on James. However, they do not have any proof that this is true and results try to generalise every child and suggest that they are all easily manipulated. Therefore it can not prove that media violence produces violent behaviour, as they do not have enough research evidence. Evidence suggests that there is no effect on violent behaviour through media violence. Hagell and Newburn compared the viewing of reading habits of 78 young offenders aged 12-18 years old with 500 school children of varied socioeconomic backgrounds. They found out that offenders did not watch more television or chose more violent programmes than...
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...cameras around the country. These cameras are supposedly to protect the British population, and to get criminals to reconsider what they are doing, before committing any crime. But according to John Kampfner, the author of the article “Big Brother is watching you more closely than ever: CCTV cameras, the spies of our midst”, which was published in 2012, this surveillance of the British population is a wrong way to fight crime. In the first part of his article John Kampfner writes, that if it was ever the case that security cameras were not up to their job, which is to make us feel secure, then it is certainly not the case right now. He writes about how Britain’s first surveillance commissioner Andrew Rennison has sounded a wake-up call, because he believes that most people have no idea how advanced the technology has become, and therefore also have no idea how much they are getting watched. In the next part of the text, John Kampfner mentions the Jamie Bulger case. Jamie Bulger was a two-years-old, who was abducted from a shopping centre in Liverpool. The surveillance cameras ended up leading to the conviction of the abductees. According to John Kampfner this was a great breakthrough for the police. He writes: “This was seen as a huge and very welcome breakthrough in policing. Although the camera did not prevent the crime, its images helped the police find the two boys who were later convicted of his murder.” In the last part, he mentions surveillance commissioner Andrew Rennison...
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...The Departed and the Irish Mob While not as talked about as the Italian mafia, the Irish Mob is just as violent and proficient in their ways. Taking place in South Boston, the departed depicts a fictitious, but only just, account of the struggle between the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish Mob. Leonardo Dicaprio’s character Billy Costigan is a new member of the MSP and is chosen to become an undercover officer because of his background. Costigan’s father was from South Boston, and Costigan spent time there as a child. He infiltrates the Irish Mob, headed by Jack Nicholson’s character Frank Costello. Frank is the violent head of the Irish Mob that seems to never really be convicted of his crimes. We later come to find out that is in part because of his status as an FBI informant. Costello has an informant in the MSP by way of Matt Damon’s character Colin Sullivan. Sullivan grew up in Costello’s neighborhood and Costello was almost a father figure to him. With his loyalty to Costello, Sullivan was convinced to join the MSP and feed information to Costello. As the movie progresses, both Sullivan and Costigan find out about each other as “rats”, but not necessarily each other’s identities until towards the end. Sullivan upon finding out who Costigan is, erases his file after the death of Captain Queenan at the hands of the Irish Mob and the dismissal of Sargent Dignam. In the end Barrigan, another one if Costello’s men on the inside, shoots Costigan and Sullivan’s partner...
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...Discuss one real life criminal case, taken from current events, identify the court that took jurisdiction. Explain why the court that took the case was the appropriate one for the particular circumstances. One of the fundamental questions of law is if a given court has the jurisdiction to preside over any given case. The jurisdictional question can be broken down into three components: whether there is over the person, whether there is jurisdiction over the subject matter, and whether there is jurisdiction to render the particular judgment sought. There are also different courts that have jurisdiction depending on the case. State courts have general jurisdictions, meaning that they can hear any controversy except those prohibited by their specific state laws. Federal courts have limited jurisdiction , meaning that they only exercise powers granted to them by the Constitution and Federal Laws. The criminal case I chose for this assignment is the case of James “ Whitey “ Bulger a crime syndicate head With a larger than life history that includes bank robbery, and being a gun supplier for the Irish Republican Army the one time F.B.I informant and head of Boston's Winter Hill Gang after being tipped off by an F.B.I agent of a pending racketeering indictment Bulger fled Boston in 1994 becoming ...
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...The hypodermic needle theory regards the audience as passive and the power of media messages strong and that media influences people to behave in a certain way. The effects debate is the argument that the media has the potential to influence an audience, to affect them in negative ways, and that there is a need to protect people from material which might cause harm of one kind or another. The messages in the media are injected into the audience like a drug, but they don’t notice the effects that it has on them. The effects of messages in the media tend to be associated with bad behavior, and negative actions, especially regarding sex and violence. An example of this is the Sandy Hook Shooting, where the boy’s ruthless actions were blamed on the influence of the game Call of Duty by the New York Times, which he supposedly spent a lot of time playing alone in his basement. The hypodermic needle theory is also known as the hypodermic-syringe model of communications, and is referred to as the magic bullet theory. It implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s was perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change, yet according to Katz and Lazarfeld (1955), the model is rooted in 1930s behaviorism and is concerned by many to be obsolete today. The hypodermic needle model suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. The study known...
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...and biography based on a man by the name of James Joseph Bulger, also known as “Whitey”. He and his Irish-American mob were notorious in Boston during the late 1970’s for protecting their infamous name and desired territory. The mob would go to any extreme to intimidate and frighten anyone who would interfere with their success. Cooper is credible for producing a movie that shows in-depth scenarios that happened to Whitey and his mob during the time. He also elaborates on the explicit confrontations the mob...
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...In the newspaper article “Why Boys Become Vicious”, William Golding discusses the complexity of cruelty and the situations and cases in which cruelty can flourish. First, Golding begins to point out that there’s a simplicity that can be found in great moral leaders of Western civilization and then continues by comparing some evil people of the twentieth century to them, while pointing out that there was nothing simple about people like Hitler who committed terrible deeds. He then goes on to describe the crime committed by two ten year old boys, he explains that the older boys led James Bulger a two-year-old boy out of a shopping center and then proceeded to beating him and dumping him on train tracks. The author then says, “to contemplate that...
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...instances of inaccuracy through the research. There are many on-going debates into Mass Medias influences on crime and violent crime in particular, but is this a true reflection of the current culture crisis or a fabrication to sell copy, taking for instance the Murder case of James Bulger in 1993, after the then 10year old boys Robert Thompson and Jon Venable led 2year old James away from a shopping centre in Liverpool to a brutal /senseless and pointless murder the Media was instantly ‘all over’ the case , even though a murder of children by children was extremely rare the reporting of and style of reporting throughout the case was reflecting to the public all that was now wrong in Britain, The Sun instantly called for ‘a crusade to rescue a sick society’, a ‘breed’ of violent children , single mother parenting , and dysfunctional underclass families where being painted as those whom would bare these types of violent monsters creating one of the most widely advertised Moral panics of the 20th Century (Cohen, 2002). Television and video games where two other forms of education for these child killers with many media organisations reporting that video nasty’s where the influence to the brutal murder of James...
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...6/8/12 What are moral panics? What are 'moral panics'? Hayley Burns If we do not take steps to preserve the purity of blood, the Jew will destroy civilisation by poisoning us all. (Hitler, 1938) Surely if the human race is under threat, it is entirely reasonable to segregate AIDS victims, otherwise the whole of mankind could be engulfed. (The Daily Star, 2 December 1988) Although an extreme illustration, the above quotes serve to set up the creation of a 'moral panic'. Just as Hitler's 'facts' were unfounded, so too were The Daily Star and what resulted from both incidents was, in effect, the persecution of two minority groups within society. Hitler's quote stemmed from the use of propaganda, and although it would be fair to say that the essence of what is termed 'propaganda' does not exist in such a force today, it is nevertheless evident that what was quoted from The Daily Star is tantamount to propaganda. Throughout history, the mass media industry has been utilised as a tool to appeal to the public at large, particularly in the field of politics, where people in a position of power can tempt society into believing what they want them to believe. As Eldridge describes "The media, wittingly or unwittingly, reproduce the definitions of the powerful." [Eldridge 1997: 65] This document will examine not only the essence and origin of the term 'moral panic' but the very important nature of the media's involvement in the whole process of creating a 'moral panic'. It was Stanley...
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...When Children See Too Much While violence is not new to the human race, it is an increasing problem in modern society. With greater access to firearms and explosives, the scope and efficiency of violent behavior has had serious consequences. We need only look at the recent school shootings and the escalating rate of youth homicides among urban adolescents to appreciate the extent of this ominous trend. While the causes of youth violence are multifaceted and include such variables as poverty, child abuse, family psychopathology, exposure to domestic and community violence, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders, the research literature is quite compelling that a child's exposure to media violence plays an important role in the origin of violent behavior (Watson). While it is difficult to determine which children who have experienced televised violence are at greatest risk, there appears to be a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior within vulnerable "at risk" segments of youth. Children spend more time in front of the television every week than they do on any other activity except sleeping (Muscari 31). Exposing children to violence can desensitize them to violence and cause them to act more aggressively. To understand human attraction to violent entertainment, it is necessary to look not only at, but beyond, the mass media. Depictions of violence, bloodshed and death are not new, and they certainly are not a product of the electronic...
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...Prior to this, wartime rape and the provision of kidnapped 'comfort women' for soldiers had been regarded simply as a by - product of war. While legal sanctions hold, there is reasonable understanding about what constitut es crime, but this understanding tends to vary according to historical, cultural and power dimensions which may rule different behaviours as criminal at different times. Obvious examples of this are when laws change, so for example attempting suicide was regarded as a criminal offence until 1961, while incest was not classed as a crime until 1908. Similarly, female circumcision is acceptable in some cultures though not in the UK, while in contrast male circumcision has never been against the law, though in both cases genital mutilation occurs without the consent of the individual concerned. Age and mental state also influence whether someone is regarded as having committed a crime. The age of criminal responsibility varies considerably from country to country, so in the UK it is 10 while in Norway it is 15. The murder of two small children by other children in both countries in 1993 and 1994...
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...Should the minimum age of criminal responsibility be raised? ‘Boys will be boys’, but at what age does this no longer apply? At what age is a boy expected to take on the responsibilities of a man? The Children and Young Persons Act 1963 (s.16) provides that ‘It shall be conclusively presumed that no child under the age of ten years can be guilty of an offence’. This means that once a child in the UK reaches the age of ten they are as exposed and liable to the full weight of the law the same as any adult. The UK currently has the lowest minimum age of criminal responsibility (except Scotland at 8 but cannot be prosecuted until 12) within the European Union. This places the UK significantly below the average of 14 years old. There seems to be little justification for this deviance from the norm in regards to the minimum age of responsibility in the UK and there have been considerable publications pushing for the UK to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the last decade, providing substantial evidence in favour of doing so. The evidence supporting the need to raise this minimum age can be found not only in psychology and scientific research regarding the brain development of youth and autonomy of children at this age, but also the severe social implications of criminalizing our youth. In order to argue that the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) should be raised it will be necessary to identify and evaluate this evidence, as well as identifying...
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